Jessica Battilana, 7x7: “San Francisco Chefs Finally Realize New York Chefs Don’t Care About Them,” “Noted Newspaper Critic Admits, Once and For All, That Everyone Knows Who He Is”

Nish Nadaraja, Yelp: Restaurants Start Growing Their Own Vegetables; Yelp Acquires Eater; The Year of the Fancy Take-Out Containers.

Jan Newberry, San Francisco Magazine: I'm love how fine dining is reinventing itself at places like Commis and Saison, with such serious and thoughtful food in a more relaxed environment. I hope that trend continues. We have enough great pizza. I'd like to see chefs start taking chances again.

Brett Emerson, Contigo: We're seafood fanatics at Contigo, so we would rejoice if we saw a headline announcing the return of local salmon fishing! If that doesn't happen, we look forward to seeing more chefs championing the local fishermen that catch fish sustainably. You can't beat the line caught rockfish, ling cod and black cod from Ft. Bragg, the sardines and squid from Monterey, and, when in season, the local dungeness, halibut, petrale, sand dabs, albacore, opah, smelt and harpoon caught swordfish.

James Oseland, Saveur: 1. Mom-and-pop restaurants offering smart, homey REAL food will beat out soulless, grotesquely bankrolled dining palaces at 2010’s James Beard Awards—and every year after that. 2. Top Chef Masters, season 2, will thrill, confound, and shock viewers. 3. Print-edition food magazines will not only continue, they will thrive.

Bruce Hill, Picco/Bix: Casual, innovative will rule. Chefs will all use my Chef's Press available through Williams-Sonoma in February

Kate Krader, Food & Wine: VEGETABLES. And maybe maybe more healthy dishes. Chefs, like Mario, are making meat the side dish for health and environmental reasons (his Otto cookbook coming out in April 2010 is all about that). Even the chefs at Animal in LA - Animal! - say they're getting sick of all the pork belly in their staff meals and going towards more fish and vegetable dishes. David Chang has talked vegetables since before last year. Also, more southern (at an upcoming place there's word of barbecue spaghetti!!). And more regional American, yippee. And I think/hope there's a new tier being established above the comfort food mob.